The 1980s have been turbulent times for banking in many developing countries. Many countries have had to deal with troubled banks, banks with negative capital and a significant percentage of nonperforming assets. At the same time, there has been significant experimentation with deregulation and reform. This has taken many forms. Most significantly there has been liberalization of interest rates, often undertaken as a result of international, as well as domestic pressures. Countries have also reexamined policies toward specialized and segmented banking markets, thus confronting the question of equality of treatment as between different banks, as between banks and other depository institutions, as between depository institutions and other financial institutions, and as between financial institutions and commercial enterprises.
